Apple's trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI took a sharper turn this week after the iPhone maker accused its AI rival of destroying evidence, adding fresh detail to a case that has grown from a dispute over departing engineers into one of the most closely watched legal fights in the technology industry.

 

In a filing submitted August 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Apple alleged that former senior systems electrical engineer Chang Liu instructed a colleague to "restore," or wipe, Apple-issued devices after learning the company had launched an internal investigation into his conduct. 

 

Apple's lawyers characterized the move as a deliberate attempt to erase evidence relevant to the case, which is being heard by Judge Edward J. Davila ahead of an October 1 hearing.

 

What the new filing alleges

According to Apple's filing, a forensic review of a MacBook that Liu retained after leaving the company found that he accessed Apple's third-party cloud storage months after his departure and downloaded a confidential circuit schematic. Apple says Liu then used the stolen design to run electrical simulations in LTspice, an engineering tool, on OpenAI's behalf. 

 

The filing quotes Liu describing the work in his own words: he said that "in the past hour," an AI agent he had built "learned how to run LTspice, look at result, tune compensation parameter" — language Apple's lawyers say shows OpenAI's hardware team was using Apple's proprietary design data to train and direct automated engineering tools.

 

Apple also claims the laptop contained software carrying the same name as a proprietary internal Apple engineering application, which it says suggests deeper reliance on Apple's internal tooling than previously disclosed. 

 

The company says it is now aware of additional current and former OpenAI employees who had knowledge of Liu's access to Apple's systems, and it has asked the court for expedited discovery to examine other devices in Liu's possession before the scheduled hearing.

 

How the case began

Apple first sued OpenAI on July 10, accusing the company of orchestrating a scheme to obtain confidential information about unreleased Apple products through former Apple employees. The lawsuit's central figures are Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a 24-year Apple veteran who once led product design, and Liu, who spent eight years at Apple before joining OpenAI's hardware group. 

 

Apple alleged that OpenAI used the company's own internal project code names during recruiting, asked candidates to bring Apple hardware components to job interviews, coached departing staff on how to avoid detection by Apple's security systems, and solicited details about unannounced iPhone and Apple Watch technology. 

 

Apple's complaint framed the alleged conduct starkly: "This is the tip of the iceberg. Apple lacks visibility into what's happening behind closed doors at OpenAI."

 

OpenAI has denied wrongdoing throughout. In its original response to the suit, the company said flatly, "We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets," and it has since asked the court to dismiss the case entirely, calling the allegations meritless. 

 

In a public post responding to the newest filing, OpenAI escalated its own counterattack, describing Apple's lawsuit as "careless, aggressive and oddly personal." The company disputed several of Apple's underlying claims, saying Apple's outside counsel mistakenly emailed the wrong person due to a mix-up between similarly named individuals, and that Apple's assertion of having discussed the matter directly with OpenAI's general counsel was false — a claim OpenAI says Apple has since walked back. 

 

OpenAI also argued that Apple told the company in February it was "resolving any issues" internally, only to stay silent for five months before filing suit, and that Apple's own departing-employee access controls, not any OpenAI scheme, allowed Liu's cloud access to linger after he left. On the new evidence-destruction claim specifically, OpenAI called the dispute "a mess of Apple's own making."

 

A lawsuit that keeps expanding

The case has escalated steadily since it was filed. Apple sought a preliminary injunction on August 3 to block OpenAI from using any disputed information while litigation proceeds. OpenAI moved to dismiss on August 5, framing the suit as Apple's response to losing hardware talent rather than evidence of theft. 

 

Apple pushed back on August 19, signaling it wanted the case to proceed into full discovery, a process that would force both notoriously secretive companies to disclose internal communications, recruiting practices and hardware development details. The August 31 evidence-destruction filing marks the case's most serious escalation yet, and Apple's attorneys say the scope of implicated former employees has grown to 11.

 

The dispute sits against the backdrop of OpenAI's broader push into consumer hardware. In May 2025, OpenAI acquired io, a device startup co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a deal reported at $6.4 billion, signaling the company's ambitions to build AI-native hardware that could eventually compete with the iPhone. 

 

Apple and OpenAI remain commercial partners of a kind — ChatGPT has been integrated into Apple's operating systems since 2024 — which makes the increasingly personal tone of the litigation notable even by Silicon Valley standards.

 

Why it matters

Beyond the specific claims against Liu and Tan, the case has become a proxy fight over how aggressively AI companies can recruit hardware talent from established device makers, and over what happens when an AI agent — rather than a person — is the one directly executing potentially compromised work. 

 

Apple's filing is among the first prominent legal disputes to center on an AI agent carrying out tasks using allegedly stolen source material, a detail that lawyers tracking the case say could shape how courts evaluate liability when automated systems, not just employees, are the instruments of an alleged trade secret misuse.

 

Should the case proceed past the October 1 hearing and into full discovery, both companies would likely be compelled to disclose internal communications and hardware roadmaps that neither has been willing to make public. 

 

For now, OpenAI is pressing for dismissal, Apple is pressing for expedited access to more of Liu's devices, and the two companies whose products power much of the smartphone and AI assistant markets are on a collision course that shows no sign of settling quietly.